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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Dashain for Magars - I

Recently, I have got this very beautiful book "Fatalism & Development" by Dor Bahadur Bista - no doubt its one of the masterpiece in its own and has explained how the Nepali Culture and Hindu Religion has evolve in Nepal. I greatly appreciate The Author's effort to look into cultures outside Kathmandu Valley value when at that time most of the other authors (small 'a' for them) were busy writing shit (as this Author said mixing history & mythology) or only about Kathmandu. No doubt at that era Nepal means only Kathmandu or something related to Royal family, that absolutely make no sense to read.

The article is just the extension on his Work and completely my opinion, though truly inspired by his masterpiece.

As Author has said in his masterpiece today's so called Hindu religion we are practicing in Nepal is complete intermingling of local & outside belief. Village temples - so called KOT, what I have noticed is that during dasain (more specific on Navami) not everywhere or everyone Sacrifice animals, however it differs from Kot to Kot. This shows that there is no uniformity in worshipping style and eveything has been done according to Priests preferences and was not completely related to Hindu Religion.

This one thing also confirms the perfect blend of Shamanism & Hinduism. I believe originally Hinduism itself is evolved from shamanism, it won't be wrong if we say that Hinduism is the advance version of Shamanism with more specific on their rituals and worshiping style. Thats may be one of the reason why Hinduism get so well blended with local ethnic Shamanism.

The worship of stone itself prove that conversion of local dieties into Hindu god. Today also its very hard to find any picture of Hindu god in Kots. For example as our Kot is known as Aalam Devi its very difficult to differentiate which Hindu god its actually belongs to, so is the case in every other part of the country. If the culture would have Hindu driven these Kots or Temples would have more specific god oriented as we can in Indian temples, where all the gods are kept in their own form.

So, debate can go on & on. It was one of the interesting part thats the reason I have like to post it. Will definitely come with more Magar related facts.